


fight the daylight

by deliveryservice



Series: born from the sea and the sky [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Hinata Shouyou-centric, Magical Realism, Mythology - Freeform, because i couldn't get the shouyou as a sun god brainworms out of my head, still canon compliant (to a degree) though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/pseuds/deliveryservice
Summary: Shouyou is special, the sky tells him so.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & the Sun
Series: born from the sea and the sky [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950406
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	fight the daylight

**Author's Note:**

> cw: mentions of vomiting and blood (vomiting in 6, blood in 2)

**1**

SHOUYOU RISES WITH THE SUN.

He doesn’t need an alarm to wake him in the quiet of the dawn, as the first of the sun’s rays peek through ink-blue cloudless skies do. He never wakes groggy, or sleepy. The moment the sun’s blade pierces his window, straight to his skin, restless energy bundles and presses up in the confines of his bones, caged, restless energy threatening to break free.

“There’s no way _you_ , of all people, don’t need to use an alarm,” Tsukishima tells him one day. The first-years are gathered together, and after Shouyou lets them know of his habit of waking up without the need of any external help, surprise is the mildest way of putting the shock that sprouts across everyone’s features. If Shouyou cared more, maybe he’d be offended—except he doesn’t, so the most he feels is affronted amusement.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shouyou asks, waving his arms next to his face like a squirming jellyfish. Tsukishima turns his face away and snickers as if Shouyou can’t see him clearly, still. “Hey!” Shouyou looks at Kageyama, who isn’t snickering, but isn’t getting mad at Tsukishima as he usually would. “Back me up, Kageyama,” he whines.

Instead of receiving the support from his best friend that Shouyou deserves, Kageyama, unhelpful and face twisted in a stiff scowl like he can’t change it to resemble anything else, actually _sniffs_ at him. Rude.

“Tsukki has a point,” Yamaguchi adds, completely unhelpful.

“You’d think everything he says has a point,” Shouyou sulks. Yamaguchi stammers and turns ripe tomato red. “Forget I even said anything.”

For a moment, the sun’s light dims and dwindles, even as no clouds pass through to cover its midday shine.

**2**

When Shouyou was five, he’d scraped his knee after taking a tumble down a lush evergreen hill. He’d been running around the house, adrenaline in his knees and joy in his chest at the feeling of wind caressing his cheeks, and he’d been too absorbed in his little sprint that he hadn’t seen the rock standing in his way between one step and the next—and the next thing Shouyou knows, he’s falling, falling, falling, the wind biting when it’d been a gentle whisper prior and soft edges of his skin greeting the soil of the harsh, rocky ground.

Shouyou does what any self-respecting five year old would do in that situation: He wails, and wails, and wails, the echoes of his cries haunting the meadow he’d fallen into like a shitty B-rated horror film about a child who’d run too fast and fallen too hard. His side hurts, his ribs ache, and terror seizes his throat as he cries and cries, cries loud enough it sends the rabbits scurrying away from him, cries hard enough it scabs his throat sore and raw.

Something warm and wet drools down his knee to his feet, and Shouyou knows it’s blood. He’s seen the way his mother bleeds when her delicate skin prickles the sharp edge of a knife when she’s cooking him meals, has seen the way his father bleeds when he’s trying to fix something broken at home and scrapes his feet against the pavement too hard.

When they bleed, their blood is several shades deeper than strawberry red.

When Shouyou bleeds, his blood is golden, flecks of light reflected from its molten sheen. Shouyou’s cries die in his throat the moment he sees, because Shouyou is five and he’s hurt and terrified, but he knows blood is meant to be red and gross and a hard sight to behold, not gold and shiny and almost beautiful.

He limps his way back home, and the moment the sun greets his skin, the ache in his bones disappear, and his wound knits itself close; gold dries on his now-spotless knees, the sting of pain dulling into something tingling and foreign.

Shouyou doesn’t (can’t) tear his eyes away.

**3**

Little oddities about Hinata Shouyou the Shouyou household has gotten used to and never talk about:

  1. Shouyou’s windows are always open in daytime, even on the most blistering summer days; he only closes his curtains when Natsu asks. Natsu will swear she has seen her brother pressing his cheeks against his window on one dangerously hot day in June, and instead of wincing from the pain or sweating from the heat, Shouyou soaks and basks in the sun’s rays much like a dog snaps to attention to a surprise treat.
  2. On the rare occasion Shouyou has gotten ill—fallen to a fever, or had coughs wracking through his body for days on end—visits to the doctor never help as much as going outdoors on a sunny day does. Once, Shouyou nearly gave his mother a heart attack when he went running out the house the time he had a high fever. Instead of getting even sicker, the next day, Shouyou is miraculously healthy. The medicine his parents bought collects dust on his windowpane.
  3. Sometimes, Shouyou doesn’t look like Shouyou. In dusk or twilight, when Natsu observes her brother gazing out at the horizon, flecks of light kissing his skin, Shouyou almost looks _older_ ; and it isn’t Shouyou suddenly growing a beard, or liver spots popping up all over his skin. But Shouyou’s youthful innocence flickers, showing something mature and almost ancient, the soft lines of Shouyou’s face sharpening like an end of a blade. Then the moment disappears and Shouyou goes back to looking like _Shouyou_ , Natsu’s older brother Shouyou, and Natsu wonders if she’d really seen what she had at all.
  4. Everyone knows Shouyou is athletic, but not many know that Shouyou is strong. Not in the way an athlete is, trained muscles rippling through his skin, but instead in a way that is _inhuman_ —impossible. Shouyou pushes the family’s car when he is seven—they were on a road trip and they’d run out of gas in the middle of nowhere—without anyone’s help, and when his mother asked him, frenzied and frantic, on how Shouyou had managed that, Shouyou is lost because _nobody else can do that_? It turns into a family secret and his mother swears Shouyou to secrecy.
  5. There are golden flecks in Shouyo’s eyes. When he was younger, they were lightly scattered across his irises like little flicks of paint. Easy to dismiss as a trick of the light, because what else would it be? It doesn’t make sense, although neither does a great deal of things about Shouyou. As he ages, the little flicks of paint spread and coat the corners of his pupils. By the time he turns fourteen, Shouyou’s eyes are almost fully gold, and he is an anomaly.



**4**

“Sometimes, Hinata would do certain actions as if he were guided by the gods,” Kiyoko once said.

She doesn’t know just how close she’d been to the truth.

**5**

ONE DAY, SHOUYOU WAKES TO PAIN.

Fire licks his insides and his gut twists and twists, sending him sprawling back on his bed the very second after he’d tried rising to his knees. White-hot pain rushes from his head down to the tips of his feet, and Shouyou _writhes_ , tucking his knees to his chest, chin pressed close against his neck; whimpering.

Ithurtsithurts _ithurts_ —it’s burning him inside and then it’s freezing cold, and Shouyou just wants it to _stop_.

His mother knocks on his door, telling him to come to breakfast and “Shouyou, you’re going to be late!”

She opens the door when Shouyou doesn’t deign her with a response and finds Shouyou’s cheeks splotched red with tear stracks, brows knitted so closely together the wrinkles in his forehead underlie a vein. “Shouyou!” she gasps, and kneels by his side, gentle fingers caressing his red-hot cheeks. “What happened to you?”

“Hurts,” Shouyou bites out. Pain convulses across his chest, leaving Shouyou wondering if this is what it feels to have your own body eating you up from the inside. “Hurts so much,” he whispers, and his voice cracks.

Mother cradles his head on her lap. Shouyou latches onto the barest thread of comfort, pouring all of his willpower into focusing on this, on the comfort his mother provides, instead of the pain taking over him—it is his anchor, and yet, today it is not enough.

The pain twists and guts him, even as he cries and weeps and moans. Feverish droplets of sweat excrete from his back and forehead, and the last thing Shouyou sees before darkness collects at the corners of his vision is a brilliant, luminous light.

His mother calls out his name; panicked.

He faints.

**6**

When he comes to, he is lying on a hospital bed. White—and not natural light—fills his sight the moment he blinks his eyes open, and Shouyou immediately closes his eyes again to shield them from his rapidly growing headache. Natsu calls for mother the moment she sees him wake.

“Shouyou!” Heavy weight rests on his chest, and Shouyou realizes it’s Natsu hugging him when he opens his eyes again. Slower this time. He notices she’s crying when something warm and wet permeates his thin hospital blanket and presses onto his gown. “We were so worried about you,” she whispers, and her voice is hoarse; cracked and broken.

“Better,” Shouyou says. If he’d thought his mother’s voice was hoarse, it turns out his sounds much worse. His throat sears in protest, and he croaks, “water?”

Mother prods a glass of clear water against his lips. Shouyou drowns it in two large gulps, and regrets it immediately when bile rises to his throat. His mother looks at him in worry, seeing the pain and regret stretched out across the expanse of his face. Shouyou throws up on his blanket, and Natsu gets away barely in time.

Natsu’s nose scrunches. “Gross!”

At the same time, his mother says, “Try not to drink it too fast next time, Shouyou. I’ll call a nurse.”

Shouyou blushes and nods. He isn’t nauseous anymore, and his throat feels sligtly better, but his legs feel icky and wet and gross. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, sweetheart.” Mother brushes back wild strands of his hair with the tips of her fingers, once slender-and-soft now slender-and-calloused from years of household work. “Do you know what happened to you?”

Shouyou hesitates, and shakes his head. “No.” He doesn’t know. All he _does_ know is that one day he’d woken with pain like nothing he’d ever felt—or even imagined—before, when the day before he hadn’t even done or consumed anything he was allergic to. “I don’t know either. Did the doctors find out?”

“They didn’t—they couldn’t,” she corrects herself. “They tried to see what was wrong with you, but they couldn’t find signs of anything.”

Something close to realization and dread hits him, because suddenly, Shouyou _knows_.

“How... how long have I been out?”

Mother hesitates. It doesn’t sound like something she’d wanted to say, but Shouyou insists. She relents: “Five days.”

“FIVE DAYS?!” Shouyou nearly yells. He would’ve, if his throat hadn’t protested and cuts off his voice in the middle of his sentence. As a result, what’d resulted had sounded more like ‘FIVE DA—?!’ “But what about the hospital bills? They’re expensive! We can’t afford to stay much longer, we have to go home now!”

“Shouyou, it’s alright,” she tries to reassure him. “Your health is more important than anything else.”

Shouyou shakes his head quickly, stubbornly. “ _No_ , mom. We need to go home now. I can walk just fine, see?” To demonstrate, Shouyou attempts to stand up and walk around. He forgets he’s on an IV drip, moves too fast, and has his blood reversing the drip of the IV. Coin gold flows through the straw and Shouyou yelps. “I’m bleeding!”

“Mom, his blood is gold?” Natsu asks, like Shouyou isn’t having a mini-breakdown right in front of her as the blood flows and flows. “Why is his blood gold?”

His mother, bless her, doesn’t even blink before she rushes to Shouyou’s side and fixes the direction of the IV drip in a way that speaks only of experience. In a way, it _is_ experience, having gone through a similar ordeal of when she’d done the same for his father during his time in the hospital years ago. “We’re staying here until your doctor lets you leave.”

“ _Mooooommm_.”

“Shouyou, this isn’t negotiable. You scared all of us—at least let us have some peace of mind, now.”

And Shouyou wants to argue, but his mother is wearing the tone she always uses when something is final and definitely _not_ negotiable, so he wisely shuts his mouth and pouts. With his mother, Shouyou knows a losing battle when he sees one. (When he’s in one right now.)

“Fine,” he mutters. “Did anyone... try to visit?”

The stern look on his mother’s face melts, replaced by one of genuine, if exasperated, fondness. “Your volleyball friends did, but they were kicked out by the hospital for being too rowdy. You can see them again after you go back to school, okay?”

The thought of the Karasuno Volleyball Club being kicked out of a hospital is funny enough that Shouyou begins to laugh; he can imagine the third years apologizing profusely for their behavior but getting dragged out, anyway, and it leaves Shouyou with longing for his friends.

And, for some reason, longing for sunlight prickles at the forefront of his mind.

**7**

Shouyou has a problem.

“Shouyou, have you looked into a mirror recently?” Nishinoya asks him at practice. It’s Shouyou’s first day back, and everyone has been looking at him closely—paying attention to him—throughout the day. It’d be nice if it didn’t make Shouyou feel like there was something on his face that only he was missing.

“No...?”

“Dude,” Tanaka interrupts, “you’re glowing.”

“Glowing?” Shouyou’s eyes widen. “But I don’t even use skincare!”

“No, like, _literally glowing_.”

Shouyou dashes to the nearest mirror in the changing room, and looks at his own reflection so hard that his eyes burn. Tanaka was right. He _is_ glowing, and in the literal sense: Shouyou’s skin glistens and bursts with light, and the closest way to describe it would be an _aura_ emanating off him in streaks of bright, pearly yellow. Shouyou tries to cover his left arm with his right, and the glow remains, persistent and steady and magnetic to the eye.

“WHAT THE FUCK—”

**8**

Of course Shouyou would get all his answers in a dream, of _course_.

It’s the summer training camp and Shouyou goes to sleep with sweat sticking to his back (even after he’d taken a thorough soak) and energy thrumming in his veins, the way it always does in summertime. He finds sleep nice and easy, that night, and doesn’t suspect a thing until he wakes to himself floating in the sky.

The first thing Shouyou does is scream, because _how is he floating this doesn’t even make sense_ and _oh my God oh my God am I going to die I can’t fly_.

“My Chosen,” the sky says—or at least, Shouyou presumes it’s the sky, because he hears voices in his head when he’s the only one there and _oh my God am I going mad_? “You are not mad,” the sky chuckles, and Shouyou freezes. You would think, with an unknown entity calling out to you without a form at all and making you presume it’s voices in your head, you would feel much less at ease: This is not the case for Shouyou, whose worries ebb and turn to mist at the reassurance of the sky.

He’d never thought a voice could feel so much like coming home.

“Am I dreaming?” Shouyou wonders.

The sky laughs. “Just because you are, why would that make this any less real?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Shouyou says. Or maybe it does and Shouyou just doesn’t understand it—he knows he isn’t very smart. “What are you?”

“Bit of a question for the ages, there,” says the sky. “I am thou, thou art I.”

“Huh? Isn’t that from a video game?” Shouyou doesn’t play games, but he’s accompanied Kenma while he’s played his—through blurry video calls, granted—and that line is eerily familiar.

“Is it?”

“I think it is.”

“Rest assured this is not a video game, my Chosen,” It assures him. It, with a capitalized ‘I’ because Shouyou doesn’t know who (or rather, _what_ ) he’s talking to, but he knows, just like he knows water is wet and fire is hot, that whatever it is, It is something ancient and powerful—and even Shouyou, dense as he may be at times, knows enough to treat something like that with proper respect. Lest he get smited. “However, what I have said is true. I _am_ you, just as you are me; you are my Chosen, and we are twined in spirit and soul, forevermore.”

Shouyou scratches his head. Peers at the sky as closely as he can, basking in the warmth and comfort it fills him with. “I don’t get it.”

It laughs, and the sound is simultaneously booming and tinkering. “You don’t have to understand everything at once, my Chosen. You will learn, in time.”

“The… the pain,” Shouyou recalls. “Was it you?”

For something that is faceless, Shouyou can see It frowning. “I apologize for that, truly. I had no other way to fully realize your potential—rest assured, it will never happen again,” It swears. Even though Shouyou has only really met It for less than five minutes, Shouyou knows It is something that has been with him for as long as he can remember—and even longer then; so he trusts and believes, because what else is there to do?

“You promise?” Shouyou asks. It had been one of the worst things he had ever felt. Shouyou doesn’t doubt it could very well be the most painful thing he has, and will ever, experience.

“You have my word.”

“Okay, then.” Shouyou trusts and believes. “I still have questions.” Like why are his eyes gold? Why can he push and lift things nobody else can? Why in the world is he _glowing_?

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” It says. There’s a lull in its response. Shouyou assumes It will answer his question, but then It titters, soft and frustrated. “Our time’s up, for now. I will contact you again soon, my Chosen. Rest well.”

The sky disappears and Shouyou sleeps.

**9**

SHOUYOU JUMPS HIGHER AND MOVES FASTER THAN EVER.

Karasuno still has a mile-to-none losing streak, and Shouyou still does laps of running to treetop hills nearly every hour. He is always the first to start, and the first to finish; his stamina, previously a large pool swirling at the depths of his chest, have turned into a vast, bottomless sea, and Shouyou has never tired himself out after the hours and hours’ end of gruelling practice he throws himself into. _He’s a monster,_ everyone thinks, seeing Shouyou rise at dawn every day to run laps around the school and still have energy to spare for official _and_ , later on, individual practice.

“Oi, Hinata,” Kageyama says one day. “Did you really get sick?”

“You jerk, of course I did! Why’d I lie about that?”

“What kind of sickness was it, then?” Kageyama challenges.

Shouyou’s brain stutters; he doesn’t know this either. “The doctors couldn’t find out,” he admits, scowling. “But I was _sick_ , okay? It was… there was so much pain.”

Maybe it’s the whisper in Shouyou’s voice. Maybe it’s Shouyou’s shoulders hunching at the memory, hands pressing against his stomach where it’d felt like it had been torn from the inside-out. Maybe it’s Kageyama just pitying Shouyou, because he drops the matter and tears his gaze away from Shouyou.

“Whatever it was,” Kageyama says gruffly, “you’re different now.”

**10**

Hinata Shouyou was chosen by the sun.

Ichor runs in his veins and the sun sleeps in his eyes, seeing the world through Shouyou’s lenses. It is the gold in his eyes, the gold that rings around his pupil; the gold that so many people see as odd, of something strange and foreign and _unnatural_ , but for Shouyou is a mark he wears with pride.

Hinata Shouyou is the sun’s champion.

 _My Chosen, my champion,_ the sky sings against his skin, and the sun preens constantly at him, giving him life and spirit like nothing else does. Hinata Shouyou, blessed by the sun, smiled upon by its sharp, bright blade.

Shouyou is special, the sky tells him so.

**Author's Note:**

> other characters coming soon
> 
> i hope u liked this!!! <3 my twt is [@genshinkaeya](https://twitter.com/genshinkaeya)


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